


Grow Up and Blow Away

by waketosleep



Series: Author's Favourites [8]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Growing Up, Post-Movie(s), Pregnancy, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven isn't a child anymore. She's trying to prove it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grow Up and Blow Away

**Author's Note:**

> Just a character study on my favourite mutant, post-movie with comics canon blended gently in.

It was the summer of 1964 and Mystique was twenty, living free, and enjoying a few months in Paris. Magneto, always brooding, was in a worse mood than usual and so she and Angel had slipped the leash for an afternoon of shopping. Some shared joke over breakfast had made them decide they should pretend to be sisters today, so Mystique had coffee skin and long, dark hair that made her think wistfully of the name she'd abandoned.

"Come on," Angel insisted, dragging her down a street from a dress shop to a cafe. Mystique let herself be dragged along, unable to stop laughing, infected by Angel's never-ending enthusiasm. She didn't laugh much these days; she needed to enjoy it when she could.

The cafe was blue and tan and filled with cigarette smoke and university students arguing philosophy.

"It's like music," said Angel of the rise and fall of voices as they sat down. "I can't understand anything but it sounds like poetry."

Mystique understood them, because Charles had made her learn French. The couple at the next table was breaking up; she looked away uncomfortably.

Angel said something else, maybe talking to a waitress, but Mystique's eye was caught by someone. A girl at another table, by herself. She had round sunglasses on indoors and was sipping an espresso, apparently staring at nothing. A cigarette burned away in an ashtray in front of her. She was blonde and willowy and wearing a bright green sweater with a flowing red and blue skirt. The combination hurt Mystique's eyes and drew her in at once and without thinking much about it, she was standing up and moving away from Angel's protests, slipping into the chair opposite the girl. Her black hair fell over her shoulder and for a second she wished she was wearing her usual looks instead.

The girl just smiled beatifically over her cup.

"I'm... Raven," she said. "I just, I saw you and I wanted to say hi."

"Did you?" said the girl. Woman. She sounded older than Mystique. Cultured. Smooth. American, amazingly.

Mystique shrugged and looked away, cursing her impulsiveness. "I like your sweater?" she tried.

"Oh?" said the woman. She plucked a little at her collar. "What colour is it today?"

"Uh, green?"

She nodded and sipped her coffee before putting it down, picking up the cigarette to take a drag before stubbing it out. Mystique couldn't stop watching her fingers, couldn't look away from the pink lipstick marks on the cigarette filter.

"I'm Irene. Irene Adler," said the woman, blowing smoke up and away from the table. "It's nice to meet you, Raven."

Raven grinned. "Like Sherlock Holmes!"

Irene tilted her head quizzically.

"Irene Adler was, um, Sherlock Holmes' girlfriend."

"I always thought that was Watson," said Irene, and then she said, "Yes, I know the character. Most people don't."

"My brother loves Arthur Conan Doyle," said Raven. "He used to read the stories to me." The words had barely left her mouth when she realized that was the most she'd said about Charles in two years, and she blushed, praying Irene wouldn't say anything about it.

Irene didn't seem to notice, or at least care. She played with the handle of her little espresso cup, running a nail along the curve of the handle as she looked at Raven through her big sunglasses. "Are you a student?" she asked.

"No," said Raven. "I'm, uh, here for work. For a while. What about you?" She shifted in her seat, playing with her hair a little. A quick glance over at Angel saw her staring at them over a cup of coffee. Raven looked away again quickly.

"I'm a researcher at the Sorbonne," said Irene. "I've been here for a year."

"What do you work on?"

"Game theory."

"Mathematics?" Raven hazarded.

Irene smiled. "Social psychology and biology is what I apply it to. How choices affect future choices and the choices of others."

"Sounds like genetics," Raven muttered.

"It is," said Irene brightly, having heard her. "You know a lot about genetics?"

Raven rolled her eyes. "My brother's a geneticist."

"Your brother gets around."

Raven laughed. "Oh, you have no idea."

The silence that settled was warm.

"I need to leave," said Irene after a moment. "It was nice talking to you, Raven."

"Do you come here a lot?" Raven blurted.

Irene paused in getting up, her hand almost missing the edge of the table before finding it again and pushing herself to her feet. "I do. It's not far from my office," she said, and then she said goodbye and was gone.

Raven stared after her sadly for a minute before going back to join Angel.

"You obsessed with that blind girl, or what?" asked Angel.

Raven blinked. "She was blind?"

"Uh, duh? Who walks around with sunglasses on inside? And she wasn't reading or anything even though she was alone. I guess it's cool that she can walk around without a cane or anything."

Raven hummed, staring out the window of the cafe while Angel finished her coffee.

***

It was about a week later when Raven found herself back in the same part of town. She was male so that no one would talk to her, just walking, hands stuffed in her pockets. She'd woken up thinking about Charles and Hank, and the others, and she'd been in a funk all day. Emma was driving her nuts, lording over the whole team. She missed home.

And then she walked past the cafe she and Angel had gone to and hesitated. Stopped. Turned around and marched inside, peering against the gloom after being out in the sunshine. Irene was at the same table, smoking. Raven squared her shoulders, ordered an espresso, and sat at a nearby table in sight of her, trying to watch her discreetly over the top of her cup.

Irene had different sunglasses on and was wearing a pink cardigan over a light blue dress. She smoked slowly, like she was savouring it, and an empty cup sat in front of her.

"Stop staring," she said after a minute, and Raven jumped, her cup rattling.

"What?" she asked, her voice deep and masculine and startling her again for a second.

Irene turned her head to face Raven and for a second Raven wondered if she maybe wasn't blind at all. "I know you're staring. Just come and sit down."

Raven obeyed, not sure what else to do. She cleared her throat, looked down at her masculine hands, and suddenly knew what she was doing.

"Come here often?" she asked, voice smooth.

Irene smirked. "Yes."

"Sitting alone? A pretty woman like you?"

Irene stubbed out her cigarette. "Speak for yourself."

"Uh," said Raven. "Pardon?"

"That's a neat trick," she said. "Do you look male, too?" She reached out a questing hand and Raven hesitated before guiding it to her face. Irene's fingers traced over her skin lightly before she sat back with a nod, satisfied.

"You're strange," said Raven, trying to regain a foothold in the conversation. No way could a blind woman know who she was.

Irene crossed her arms. "And you're Raven."

"Walter," Raven corrected stubbornly.

"Raven," Irene insisted gently. "Don't pull the wool over my eyes; they're immune. And I have a way of knowing these things."

"How?" Raven demanded.

"I saw it in a dream," said Irene airily.

Raven stood up in a huff.

"Wait, don't go," said Irene, flailing out to grab her wrist. She used the grip to pull herself to her feet and leaned in to Raven's chest, looking up at her even though she couldn't see (Raven liked to be tall and broad when she could, as a man). She smelled sweet. "Can you change back?"

"Not here," said Raven softly.

"Where?" asked Irene.

Raven's heart raced. She licked her lips.

"Come with me," said Irene, tugging her wrist and leading her out of the cafe, the blind leading the blinded. "We'll go to my place, it's not far."

"You're grabby," huffed Raven, taking long strides to keep up.

"I had a feeling," said Irene, "that this was going to happen sometime."

Raven shuddered at her tone.

***

Irene was a mutant who could see the future. She could see the distant future, which she wouldn't talk about, and the immediate future, which was how she kept from running into things. She'd been blind since birth and Raven discovered that she saw her visions in black and white.

"I love the texture of your scales," she said, lying next to Raven on the bed in her clean little apartment and running light fingers over her arm. "I've never fucked anyone with a texture before."

Raven laughed up at the ceiling.

"You're dark-skinned, I know that, and you're not the same colour as most people. What colour are you?"

Raven bit her lip.

"Just tell me."

"I'm blue," she said.

"Blue? Blue like what else is blue?" She rolled over and rested her chin on Raven's shoulder, smiling up at her. "What's blue like you?"

Raven wriggled down the bed and kissed her while she thought about it. "I'm blue like... blue jeans. Brand new ones. The sky after the sun sets but before it's fully dark. Blue like all the chairs in the cafe."

"Those are blue?" Irene said.

"Yes. Those are blue."

"Huh." Irene chewed her lip, thinking about it. "I guess that must be a lovely colour."

"And my hair's red," Raven couldn't help adding. "I'm like that horrible skirt you wear."

"I attracted you in that skirt, so the combination must work somehow," said Irene with an unerring poke in the ribs.

Raven pinned her to the bed and kissed her deeply and thought, _Oh my god, can a person be in love after two weeks?_

***

Raven discovered a lot of things in Paris: sex with women, smoking, eclairs, how to ride a bicycle in a flowy skirt, and the idea of a university education that had _nothing_ to do with genetics. She liked psychology. It seemed interesting; she got inside peoples' heads already, in a way. Maybe she'd study it someday; Hank had said she might live twice as long as a normal person. What was that, 150 years? Jesus.

With that much time ahead, it seemed okay to spend a little more time lingering in childhood, dancing and experimenting with drugs with Angel and butting heads with Emma all the time and putting off tomorrow as long as Magneto could stay in one place. But then she'd walk up to Irene in the cafe and smile when Irene said, "Hello, my sexy blueberry," without any prompting, and she'd call Irene a skirt-chaser and later they'd enjoy lingering kisses in the twilight and Raven was pretty sure she wasn't a child at all anymore. But adults had futures. She wanted to ask Irene what was in hers.

"Are we going to stay together?" she asked out of nowhere one day as they strolled across the university campus.

Irene just sighed. "Nothing's definite, Raven. Never."

"What does that even mean?" Raven asked the trees overhead.

Irene just took her hand. Irene could find her hand like Raven was a bright light in the dark, a blue beacon in a fuzzy, gray world.

And Raven traced a thumb over Irene's knuckle and changed the subject. "You know, every day I see you, I look like a different person. I just want people to think you cat around a lot."

"Who says I don't?" said Irene, smiling serenely, and Raven's heart fluttered. She thought it was shapeshifting right inside her chest, turning into something else.

***

Raven was sure that she'd never grow up until she got it through her head that she could never keep anything in life. They lasted two more months in Paris before Magneto declared they were leaving. Angel and Riptide called it his 'wanderlust', with a German accent that they cracked themselves up with every time.

She had just enough time to go find Irene, who was in her office at the university. Raven found her staring out the window when she poked her head through the door.

"You're going," she said without turning around.

Raven shut the door behind her. "Yeah," she said, and Irene twirled around, skirt flaring, and swooped Raven into a tight embrace. Raven buried her nose in Irene's neck, trying to memorize her smell.

"Will you ever come back?"

"You tell me," Raven tried to joke, and then realized it wasn't funny at all.

Irene sighed into her shoulder.

"You could come with us," Raven whispered, not daring to hope. "We're all mutants. Erik would love you."

"Magneto," said Irene.

"Yes."

"You're Mystique."

"Yes."

"Anyone blue can be mysterious, I guess."

Raven hugged her tighter.

"What would you call me?" Irene asked.

"Destiny."

Irene thought about that. "I like it."

Raven pulled back and studied her face. "Are you my destiny?"

"Always," said Irene, and kissed her, but the kiss didn't feel like 'yes'. Raven tried to ignore it and kissed back anyway.

***

She was definitely grown up, she realized, she had to be. Her heart had shapeshifted into something else entirely, something dependent on Irene to live, and now it was broken without her. They'd moved on to Alexandria and Raven wandered through the heat in Egyptian skin, wanting to write to Paris, to Westchester, to Oxford, to the past she kept moving away from. She didn't. She couldn't get decent drugs in Egypt so she just drank instead, drank with Angel and Riptide and Azazel, who was ancient and Russian and put them all under the table every time while Emma ran everything and Magneto kept brooding off in corners alone.

Mystique stared fuzzily at the half-empty bottle on the table and wondered if Magneto wanted to write to the past, too. Maybe they could save on postage together. Wow, she was drunk.

And then Azazel smirked at her across the table, and she realized she'd said that last bit out loud. She looked over at Angel, asleep on Riptide who was stroking her hair. She looked back at Azazel and he smiled languidly and she thought, fuck it, whatever, and stood up.

Making mistakes was part of growing up anyway, she thought fuzzily as she held out a hand for Azazel to take. They didn't teleport from the table; they walked. Mystique felt his hand on her back, nails tracing lightly over her scales and making her shiver, and had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Just one of an endless list of things she'd want to take back when she was older and wiser, still wanting to write letters to the past.

 

THE END


End file.
